While we’re waiting for the next Indiana Jones, here’s a star-studded alternative from France.
And these stars, as it happens, are mostly known for their comedy. The idea seems to be a jungle adventure version of what Michel Hazanavicius and Jean Dujardin’s OSS 117 series did to James Bond. This is Jack Mimoun And The Secrets Of Val Verde and it might just be a cult hit in the making. Here’s the trailer.
Both starring and co-writing and co-directing the picture is Malik Bentahla, a stand up comedian who played a ne’er-do-well version of Friar Tuck in a 2015 riff on Robin Hood, and who also had a leading role in Taxi 5, a recent episode in that mammoth series of Luc Besson-fuelled action movies.
He’s joined by Joséphine Japy, probably best-known over here for her role in Dominik Moll’s The Monk, though she also pops up as France Gall, one of my favourite French pop stars, in My Way/Cloclo, the biopic of the man who originally wrote My Way. That film, as coincidence has it, stars Benoît Magimel who is also in this film.
Is the French talent pool really only the size of Ramsay Street? And will Jack Mimoun see the inside of UK cinema screens?
A few years ago, I would have bet on it. Now… not so much. But maybe! Pathe did go to all the trouble of releasing a subtitled trailer for English speakers, after all. At the very least we’ll have a digital release of some kind to look forward to.
Finally, while we wait to hear more, here’s the poster.
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